Unless otherwise indicated herein, the description provided in this section is not prior art to the claims and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
A typical wireless communication system includes a number of base stations each radiating to define a respective cell in which user equipment devices (UEs) such as cell phones, tablet computers, tracking devices, embedded wireless modules, and other wirelessly equipped devices (whether or not operated by a human user), can operate. In turn, each base station may be coupled with network infrastructure that provides connectivity with one or more transport networks, such as the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and/or the Internet for instance. With this arrangement, a UE within coverage of the system may engage in air interface communication with a base station and may thereby communicate via the base station with various remote network entities or with other UEs served by the base station.
Further, a wireless communication system may operate in accordance with a particular air interface protocol or “radio access technology,” with communications from the base stations to UEs defining a downlink or forward link and communications from the UEs to the base stations defining an uplink or reverse link. Examples of existing air interface protocols include, without limitation, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA (e.g., Long Term Evolution (LTE) or Wireless Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX)), Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) (e.g., 1×RTT and 1×EV-DO), Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), and Wi-Fi, among others. Each protocol may define its own procedures for managing communications with UEs.
In accordance with the air interface protocol, each cell may operate on one or more carrier frequencies or range of carrier frequencies. Further, each cell may define a number of channels or specific resources for carrying signals and information between the base station and UEs. For instance, on the downlink, certain resources may be used to carry a pilot or reference signal that identifies the cell and that UEs may detect and measure as a basis to evaluate coverage, and other resources may be used to carry paging messages, resource-allocation messages, and other such control messages from the base station to UEs. And on the uplink, certain resources may be used to carry registration requests, resource-allocation requests, and other control messages from UEs to the base station. In addition, certain resources on the uplink and downlink may be set aside to carry bearer traffic (e.g., user communications) between the base station and the UEs.
In practice, when a UE enters into coverage of a wireless communication system, the UE may register to be served by a base station that provides the strongest coverage, and the system may responsively establish for the UE one or more bearers each defining a logical connection for carrying communications between the UE and a transport network. Each such bearer, for instance, may include a radio-link portion extending between the UE and the base station, and an access-network portion extending between the base station and a gateway or switch that provides connectivity with the transport network.
When data arrives at the system for transmission to such a UE, the data may then flow over the access-network portion of such a bearer from a gateway or switch to the UE's serving base station, and the base station may transmit the data on the radio-link portion of the bearer to the UE. Likewise, when the UE has data to transmit via the transport network, the UE may transmit the data over the radio-link portion of such a bearer to the base station, and the base station may forward the data over the access-network portion of the bearer to the gateway or switch for output on the transport network.
For various reasons, the provider of a wireless communication system may also apply different scheduling priorities for air interface transmission of different classes of data. As an example, the provider may give a higher scheduling priority to real-time or latency-sensitive data such as voice or video communications than to best-effort traffic such as e-mail and web browsing traffic. And as another example, the provider may give higher scheduling priority to data being communicated with “light users” (e.g., those who do not tend to engage in a level of data communication deemed to be excessive or threshold high) than to “heavy users” (e.g., those who tend to engage in excessive levels of data communication).
To implement such differential scheduling priorities, a base station could be arranged to determine the class of data being communicated in a given instance and to then apply a scheduling appropriate for that class. For instance, the base station could be provided with policy table that correlates each of various data classes with a corresponding scheduling weight (e.g., throttling rate), and when the base station is going to schedule air interface communication of data of a particular class, the base station may refer to that policy table to determine the scheduling weight and may apply the determined scheduling weight, possibly in addition to other scheduling policies. For the downlink, each such scheduling weight may define an extent to which the base station should throttle or otherwise reduce output of data on the air interface in relation to the rate at which the base station receives the data from the network infrastructure. For instance, one scheduling weight corresponding with one class of data may be 1:1, indicating no reduction in output rate, whereas another scheduling weight corresponding with another class of data may be 1:2, indicating a reduction in output rate by a factor of one half. Other examples are possible as well.
Further, the scheduling priorities that a base station is arranged to apply for various classes of data could differ from time to time, based on various factors, such as time of day, cell loading, and the like. For instance, the base station's policy table may define different per-class scheduling weights for particular levels of cell load or for particular times of day. Thus, for a given class of data, the base station may have a policy to apply a particular scheduling weight at certain times or based on one or more other factors but to apply a different scheduling weight at other times or based on one or more other factors.